The Radicalization of European Jews in the US Metropolis

1 Introduction

“I cannot believe that back in Russia everyone called America the Goldeneh Medina – the Golden Country. There is nothing golden. It is only darkness.”1

Although Zipporah Feldman, the young Jewish girl who noted this statement in her diary after her family arrived on New York’s Lower East Side in 1903, is only a fictional character by American writer Kathryn Lasky, the content of the note is historically more than accurate and reflects the fates of so many Jewish immigrants in the United States at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, “American history,” as scholars Siobhan O‏’‎Keefe and Sarah Quincy remarked, “is populated by immigrants who came to the United States to escape persecution, ...